Exploring maps and data for all known US mariculture farms
Overview
There are 23 states with marine coasts.
There is comprehensive downloadable data for 5 states:
- Maine, Alaska, New Hampshire, New York(?), Connecticut(?)
There are publicly available map viewers (leases or farm locations) which seem to be comprehensive, but are NOT downloadable for 4 states:
- Alabama, North Carolina, Virginia, Rhode Island
There is general info on lease holders, what they farm, and what municipality or city they are in for 6 states:
- California: general areas with acreage for commercial farms
- Oregon: map of places were commercial harvest/growing is allowed
- Maryland: Have INDIVIDUAL pdf maps of all lease applications and if they were accepted or not…
- New Jersey: Have pdf maps of all existing shellfish leases and those issued in 2020
- Massachusetts: Have number of growers per municipality with acreage and species type; also a subset of farms are available in the NE data viewer.
- South Carolina: Apparently have 9 oyster farms as of 2021
Subset of farms downloadable for 1 state:
- Florida: A map of mariculture farms which are at risk of oil spills
Couldn’t really find any information on 5 states:
- Hawaii, Washington, Texas, Louisiana, Mississippi
Probably no mariculture for 2 states:
- Delaware: Commercial harvest is illegal
- Georgia: From what I could tell, oyster farming was illegal here as recent as 2020
Comprehensive, downloadable
Maine
- https://www.maine.gov/dmr/aquaculture/leases/aquaculturemap.html
- I think we will want to use both “limited purpose” and regular leases.
- Limited purpose leases are for scientific or smaller/shorter term mariculture projects, that last up to 3 years.
- I think this can be considered “comprehensive”.
- Update to date as of September 2021.
- Has species types specified.
- Red polygons for the leases. Blue points for the limited purpose. Limited purpose has length and width measurements, so regardless we will have area for both if needed.

Alaska

New Hampshire

Connecticut
Shellfish bed managed
From the Northeast ocean council dataset:
“Connecticut – Data on Connecticut aquaculture was derived from two datasets provided by the State of Connecticut Department of Agriculture/Bureau of Aquaculture and the State of Connecticut Department of Environmental Protection. One dataset contains the location of natural shellfish beds. Natural beds managed by the state, town or used for recreational harvesting were selected from this dataset, resulting in 1855 polygons. The number of beds in use at any given time is subject to change. The second dataset contains 46 polygons representing the approximate geographical location of permitted “Certificate for Aquaculture Operation” gear sites in the Connecticut coastal waters of Long Island Sound via the State of Connecticut Application for Joint Programmatic General Permit for Aquaculture Department of the Army General Permit. These datasets are up to date as of January 15, 2016. For more information on CT Aquaculture and Shellfish, see the CT Aquaculture Mapping Atlas.”

Another map combined with NY, this is what we need (seaweed and shellfish): https://www.arcgis.com/apps/webappviewer/index.html?id=f8799cefbb4c4751a209710d14b9ad46
New York

Maps with no download
Alabama

Virginia
Shellfish
